Tech Pioneer Oshman Remembered for Vision, Leadership

Silicon Valley tends to jump on new ideas early, and change directions when the times demand it. M. Kenneth Oshman helped define the style.

Oshman, who died this month at 71 after a battle with lung cancer, is most often remembered for leading ROLM, a company that became a household word in the 1970s. The company made investors smile–it was sold to IBM in 1984 for $1.25 billion–and embodied the amped-up startup culture where employees worked long hours but enjoyed every minute of it.

Echelon Corp.

M. Kenneth Oshman

He also had a lengthy encore at Echelon, another startup whose story has been quite different. It sprang from a brainstorm of Apple co-founder A.C. “Mike” Markkula about the potential impact if computers dramatically shrank in size and price–eventually to a dollar or so–and could work collaboratively to control homes, offices and factories. The idea was promising enough to attract investors that included Motorola and financier George Soros.

Echelon, which went public in 1998, has disclosed financial results for 17 years–only five of which have included an annual profit. But Markkula insists that the company–largely because Oshman was so smart and persistent–is now having a big impact.

“We started 10 years too early,” says Markkula, who serves as Echelon’s chairman. “Ken just never lost sight of the end vision.”

The vision has morphed over the years. Originally, there was talk of putting Echelon’s chips–dubbed Neurons–into a range of devices that included appliances, lights, cars, office equipment and machine tools. A consumer, for example, might phone home to tell a Neuron-equipped sprinkler system to water the lawn.

But Echelon under Oshman later began stressing applications in the field of energy. It deployed Neurons in devices that remotely read electricity meters and help create smart grids that can react to changes in demand, weather and other factors. In 2000, the company announced a key deal with the Italian utility Enel SpA, which agreed to pay $300 million to deploy Echelon’s technology and invest $100 million for a stake in the company.

While Echelon has had fewer successes in the U.S., analysts say, Markkula estimates more than 50 million Neurons have been sold over the years.

Oshman also helped lead a big pivot at ROLM, too. The company–whose four letters come from the last names of Oshman and three other founders–started by selling special rugged computers for the military. But ROLM took a big gamble on an added business that became its hallmark, attacking the market for corporate phone switching systems and outmaneuvering mighty AT&T.

For many former associates, though, Oshman’s biggest impact was in helping to define a Silicon Valley style of management, created by engineers to motivate engineers. CEOs, in this paradigm, are expected to focus on fairly measuring and rewarding contributions to the business, minimizing internal politics and status symbols like reserved parking places and fancy offices.

“He set a kind of standard,” says Larry Sonsini, the Silicon Valley lawyer who represented ROLM and now sits on Echelon’s board. Of all the Valley entrepreneurs he has represented, Oshman was “the best blend of intelligence, vision and leadership,” Sonsini says.

Keith Raffel, who was Oshman’s first executive assistant at ROLM and also worked for him at Echelon, recalls his boss as very demanding–but in a way that made employees go to great lengths to please him. “You wanted to live up to his faith in you,” he says.

Raffel, now a writer of mysteries about Silicon Valley and a senior vice president at the life-sciences company Complete Genomics, has particularly fond memories of ROLM. “It was such a magical place,” he says, noting that he met his wife at the company as well as starting his technology career there.

“As I tell my four children, if there weren’t Ken there would be no you either,” Raffel says.